Chicks with Dicks, Men in Dresses: What It Means to be a Dra

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Transcript of Chicks with Dicks, Men in Dresses: What It Means to be a Dra

Chicks with Dicks, Men in Dresses: What It Means to be a Drag QueenContinued ...Elements of both gender revolutionary and gender conservative within drag The body of the performer highlights their social basis of gender and sexualityuse as a weapon to contest dominant heterosexual gender codes focuses on personal identities of performers TheoriesSocial Constructionist Perspective:gender and sexuality as historically variable categories

Queer Theory: subjectivity and identities of actors, as well as the role individuals play in producing/resisting and altering systems of gender inequality

Introduction: Introduction/Summary: Research Question: Are drag queens more gender revolutionary, or gender conservative?

studies the impacts of drag by analyzing the role of gender and sexuality in the process of becoming a drag queen how they help shape personal and collective identities of drag queensDefinitionsGender Revolutionary: destabilizes gender and sexual categories, by making visible social basis of femininity and masculinity

Transsexuals/Transgendered: people who display or embrace a gender identity at odds with their biological sex

StudyExamines 801 Cabaret girls in Key West Floridahow they became drag queensanalyzes personal identities and public performances of drag queenscreate collective drag queen identities, establishing new/fluid meaning of gender and sexuality Setting and DataData collected through field research of 801 Cabaret girlsConducted tape recorded semi-structured interviews with performers all drag queens identified as gay menFocus groups/attended performancesaudiences of 50 to several thousand people men, women, gay, heterosexuals, tourists and localsExamined a weekly gay newspaper of the 801 girlsThe 801 GirlsDrag performers who come from different racial, ethnic, regional, and national backgrounds examines their appearance as both male and femaledifferent ages, and staturesBecoming a Drag Queen 3 main influencing factors in doing drag Gender TransgressionMasqueradeSame-sex AttractionGender Transgressiondressing in feminine/androgynous clothing experimenting with makeupplaying with "girl" toyseffeminacy Masquerade Flaunt femininity Separate identity they could put on and take off Provided a way to hide, but also get attention Same-sex Attraction started doing drag because of their attraction to men "coming out as being gay" What it Means to be a Drag Queen: Personal Identitieswhat it means to be a drag queen varied among girls two reoccurring/important identities linked to performance of dragcollective identity strategy for undermining normative gender arrangementscommon struggle of being a drag queen was consideration of becoming a woman some did not experience crisis of wanting to become a womanTheatrical Identitymany drag queens were involved in theater liked creating identities and their identities as performersengage in "street theatre" theatrical identity involves taking on a new personadrag queen persona's are different people from theirself-presentations and performances as a collective identity brings attention to artificiality of gender and sexual binaries Conclusioncategories of masculinity/femininity, and heterosexuality/homosexuality are unstabledrag queen is a third category of gender in a society that only sees twochallenge the division between male and femalegender presentations and performances help to resist and transform gender and sexual systems force audience to think in complex ways about what it means to be a man or a woman